What Is Inescapable
by Boots'N'Opals
Summary: A poem about Sam and Jess and watching the news and irony. Some unnamed deaths, angst, and mild cursing.


**A/N: This was a blast to write. I love poetry and I love Supernatural and irony and characterization. I hope you enjoy. Let me know in a review of any comments you have, about this story or about the emotional turmoil called Being a Supernatural Fan.**

**(Minor edit made 6/28/14, because it was a consistency error that was driving me crazy.)**

**Set a couple years into Stanford.**

* * *

What Is Inescapable

You turn on the news today

Without thinking.

Because that's a normal thing to do.

"_Victim's neck sliced open, bled to death_

_Sulfur residue at the crime scene_

_No witnesses_."

You get a sick feeling

You can almost smell the sulfur and motor oil and cheeseburger wrappers,

And, irrationally, your gut churns in fear for her life.

-x-

Jess stares at the TV with disbelieving horror

And tear tracks on her cheeks.

And all you can think of is learning about dramatic irony in high school

And reading _Macbeth_ for Mr. Hastings.

All you can see in her face is Macduff

About to learn his family's dead

But unaware, in the moment,

Completely without knowledge, oblivious.

And Ross, and the audience, burdened with the screaming news,

Looks on helplessly.

-x-

You've never known of anyone who can love like her

Without inhibitions or conditions

Without prerequisites

Or a catch.

You're all she needs, and she loves you.

She wants you to have the happiness

That you have always wanted.

All she gives is love,

She takes nothing

Despite the love you try to give,

Despite what she doesn't know you are.

-x-

She asks you what you think of the case,

How someone could do such a thing-

And you're Ross again,

With the weight of that terrible knowledge of evils

Haunting you behind closed eyelids.

And you can't tell her, because

She is too beautiful to be tainted

With that knowledge that could hurt her as easily as a knife.

-x-

Sometimes you wonder if this will be the day.

The day when you explain

Why you sometimes wake up sweating cold in the dark

And why when you run you run hard.

But there are so many things stopping her from knowing

Like fear

-hers and yours-

But mostly yours.

If she sees you for you...

You know everything will change.

You can't make yourself release your grip on Normal,

Which you have missed and craved and longed for

And is better than you ever even dreamed.

She'd look at you with tears and different eyes, and

You _just can't_

Be the freak anymore.

You will resist the labels and the family name and your father's expectations with everything you have.

-x-

Because you're your own person, dammit.

You're the son of a mechanic

And Stanford material.

_Stanford material_, despite everything.

And Jess is all you need,

And you don't need or want or think about

Everything you know.

-x-

There was another death on the news today

This time tortured and bloodied.

Whatever they were looking for

They got.

You hold Jessica's hand as she cries.

And you numbly think,

How remarkable

That she mourns for them.

-x-

You remember last summer at her parents' house

A different kind of news

-her sister was pregnant-

And you congratulated them with as little awkwardness as you

-always the outsider-

could muster.

There were tears in her eyes then too

As she wept happiness for

Someone other than herself.

You can't understand how she can

So vicariously feel emotions.

-x-

You think of the last time you were shot, when it was you whose blood was spilling.

No one cried for you then.

(You didn't even cry for you then.)

She would've.

-x-

The chaos streaming over the news is calming down.

The two deaths are unsolved

But time creates distance as literal as the stretch of highway from here to Kansas

And people are trying to forget.

Because maybe it wasn't as horrible as it had seemed.

-x-

You try to remember the last time you cried.

That's right,

There were tears in your eyes That Night

When your eyes swam with confusion and hurt and anger and

Not-belonging

And excitement.

You were finally getting away and nothing-

-The Bluffing or the Begging-

Could keep you.

You cried, and some of your tears were guilty and miserable,

But they were for yourself.

-x-

When Jessica comes in to breakfast sobbing

You already know it's happened again.

This one is like the first

-someone needs a phone call-

And you don't understand, but you know you could if you tried,

And that's the worst part.

-x-

You have tears in your eyes.

And you have a scream in your throat

That's been buried there since that Christmas in Nebraska when everything changed.

Jess is lost, she doesn't know what to do

Because she hasn't seen you cry before.

Her eyes shine fear

But all you see is that incomprehensible loving sympathy.

-x-

And the irony is that she finds solace in rubbing your back and

Feeling your emotions,

Thinking that you are crying for the strangers that died.

The guilt Ross must have felt,

You think,

For knowing and knowing and knowing too much

More than he ever wanted or asked for.

And you cry pitiful tears for yourself

And she cries selfless tears for you

And you wonder whether it's your knowledge or your nature

That makes the two of you so different.


End file.
